The word “proprietary” conveys a sense of pride. If you alone have complete ownership over something, surely it’s well maintained – right?!  Not necessarily – according to Televerde’s quarterly business to business marketing survey.  Although most respondents (72%) say their own proprietary database is the primary source of their contact data, it’s apparent that ownership doesn’t necessarily equate with confidence or quality, since nearly half of the respondents (45%) admit that their data resides in multiple, disparate repositories. Not surprisingly, when asked if they recognize any data challenges in their organization today, the vast majority of our respondents (89%) answered “yes.”

Our survey begs the question – is there too much pride? Approximately one-third of our respondents reported that their contact database consists of more than 50,000 organizational records and about 20% reported more than 100,000 data contacts. When it comes to how those records are being managed, you could say the jury is still out, but not for long. A majority of our respondents (62%) indicated that the most significant marketing data challenges in their organizations was contact data that wasn’t cleansed, updated or enriched, and nearly half (43%) told us they had difficulty segmenting the good data from the bad.

Data is more complex than ever before, especially within organizations that are managing huge marketing databases and multiple brands. More campaigns to more bad contacts doesn’t necessary translate into success. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Data that hasn’t been tracked, segmented, cleansed, scored and updated along the way results in campaigns that we refer to as “spampaigns.” The fact that an overwhelming majority of respondents told us they recognized marketing data challenges in their organization begs the question: Is your enterprise managing more spampaigns than campaigns?

The good news is that sales and marketing executives acknowledge the need for improving their organization’s current marketing data strategy – rating it as very high in importance (44%) or important (47%) when responding to our survey. Regardless of how it’s done, all organizations need to make it a priority.

Good contact data management is possible within an organization, but even with the most sophisticated marketing automation systems, if the resources aren’t in place to optimize the tool, demand creation, lead generation, lead nurturing and data management all suffer. This realization is the reason clients turn to companies like Televerde for assistance. While you’re identifying the next enhancement or addition to a product or service line, we focus on B2B marketing campaign strategies to help you sell it – whether it’s developing, maintaining or segmenting contact lists, identifying new opportunities within those contacts,  tailoring a nurture campaign to turn those contacts into qualified sales leads … or all of the above.

Change is slow, but based on our survey findings, change is also imminent. Sure – most businesses recognize the challenges of managing a marketing database, and the need for improvement, but only those who seize the opportunity to do something about it will have the advantage in the marketplace.

If you’d like to self-assess the impact that poor quality contact data is having on your sales pipeline, we encourage you to use the data quality and sales pipeline conversion calculator we’ve prepared exactly for this purpose. Contact us if you’d like to learn more about how our data cleansing, enrichment and management services can help.

In the meantime, we’d like to hear how you’re addressing your contact data issues and if you’ve measured the results.

Our Research Finds That Many of You Suffer from the Dreaded “PD”

Despite having access to sophisticated tools and best practices for contact data management, sales lead generation and sales lead nurturing, a concerning level of disparity continues to exist between the sales and marketing functions within business-to-business high-tech enterprises – disparity that results in sub-optimized sales pipeline conversion rates and sub-optimized revenue performance, according to Televerde’s recent survey of high-tech B2B marketing executives.

The research we conducted clearly indicates the common symptoms of what Televerde refers to as “Pipeline Dysfunction” or “PD.”

The failure to clearly define leads, to differentiate between types of leads, and to appropriately track leads and conversion rates results in potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales revenue annually for the respondent organizations. Our research also highlights deeply rooted issues that sales and marketing teams should address to become more effective within their organizations.

Changing buyer behaviors underscore the importance of clearer lead definition distinctions and cleaner hand-offs between marketing and sales, but it is clear that some fundamental sales and marketing gaps remain wide.

Approximately two-thirds of the respondents indicated that lead leakage (i.e., lost leads that are neither acted upon nor followed up on) exists within their organizations, with a combined 6% quantifying the resulting annual estimated revenue loss at between $500,000 and $5 million-plus.

While many organizations have adapted to new methods and better practices for lead generation, lead nurturing, contact data management, and tracking of results, there are still far too many that appear to be unnecessarily lagging and need to realize the ineffectiveness of their enterprises by not addressing these issues.

Nearly half the respondents (44%) in the third edition of Televerde’s Business-to-Business Marketing Research Study do not distinguish between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead, and 13% are not even aware if their organizations make this distinction or know the difference.

Other insights from the report:

• Of the respondents who are aware of their sales pipeline lead conversion metrics, most are experiencing far smaller conversion rates from marketing qualified leads (MQL) to sales accepted leads (SAL) than SiriusDecisions’ states should be the norm for at least “average practice companies.”
• 40% of the respondents did not know their conversion metrics or indicated that their metrics were not applicable or calculable.
• 61% of the respondents recognize lead leakage as a problem within their organizations
• 89% recognize contact data challenges in their organization, with 43% indicating that their data is not cleansed, updated or enriched.
• More than one-quarter of the respondents are managing a contact database comprised of between 10,000 and 100,000 organizational records and 28% are managing a database (and sometimes multiple databases) of more than 100,000 records, so the linkage between contact data quality issues and lead leakage as well as other demand creation and nurture challenges is significant.
• 44% cited the identification of the appropriate type, relevancy and frequency of touch points as the most needed improvement in their lead nurturing process.

A major void that can make the difference between a successful enterprise and one that is experiencing slow or no revenue growth is how they nurture their leads. Nurturing relationships is one of the most basic tenets of business marketing, and in today’s digitally driven world it’s a best practice that is more easily managed on larger scale than ever before. Yet our research discloses that many organizations are still struggling with what tools to use to support their nurturing initiatives, how to integrate relevant human and digital touch points, where to find the skills to manage and implement their nurturing programs, and how to fully optimize their contact data and other resources.

The detailed research results report contains some high-value insights about current market practices and trends that we believe are timely, relevant and important for you to be aware of. In fact, that’s why we conducted the research – to inform you!

I’m interested in your thoughts on our research results so don’t hesitate to add your comments to this blog. Are your practices different, better, the same as our survey respondents? If you care to share we care to listen. To access the survey or participate in future surveys, visit http://www.televerde.com/resources/research.

Nurture seems to be the hot buzz of the marketing world these days.

Most sales and marketers still think that a nurture call is one that goes something like this: “I am calling you to touch base to see how you are doing.”

Is this the kind of call your team makes and calls “Nurture?”

What we have learned over the past few years – as the world-order in sales and marketing has changed drastically – is that the buyer-seller relationship has made a paradigm shift. The buyer has taken control of the buying process and the sale process. Today we need to recognize that these are two separate but integrated work processes. Being aware of these two distinct segments to today’s opportunity development process is the new world-order and requires best practices and elegance in integration. We call this strategy an alignment of sales and marketing or, better said, an “Integrated Demand Generation System.”

As marketers and sales professionals, we need to be expert at this and know that to reach higher levels of sales productivity, the sales person is not skilled to do both nor is it efficient for sales to spend critical cycles trying to do both.

The front end of the new demand generation activities must develop the opportunity according to the needs of the buyer. You must position your brand accordingly with consistency and relevance to build a trusting dialogue with the prospect. Prospects today are smart and capable with much detail easily available to them. What they want is the right amount of detail at the right time. They desire relevant information that provides value-oriented intelligence in multiple modalities.

Hence the concept of “Integrated Nurture.” Integrated Nurture is a well-designed communication with a specific contact on a regular basis that combines dialogue-based and digital-based orientations, creating a bi-directional understanding of client needs and making a discretionary discernment of behavior.

What does “Nurture” mean to you? How does it fit in your framework of demand creation and building sales relationships? Is your framework integrated? What’s working and what could be better optimized? I’d like your input on this timely topic.

Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Connect to us on LinkedIn
Subscribe to us on YouTube

The journalist, Victoria Barret, blew the door wide open to who and what we are. And we like it! No, it wasn’t a puff piece and no, it wasn’t all favorable. But what real reporting is? Do you trust an article or television news piece that gushes about its subject? No way. It doesn’t ring true. Forbes (via Victoria) scrutinized us every which way, going behind the scenes at our “inside the walls” call center operations, talking to our workforce and several clients. The result? An almost 360-degree view of what makes Televerde tick within the confines of a three-page article.

The article has sparked a robust and relevant dialogue among our strong and supportive base of high-tech clients, industry watchers and others, many of whom congratulated us on officially “coming out” and allowing a larger segment of the business world to see what they are experiencing from their own engagement with us – an alternative, socially responsible way of doing business that creates direct and measurable benefits for society by positively affecting the lives of a disenfranchised group of women.

Without question, our business model’s all-around economic benefits are enormous. At an average annual cost of $22,650 to house an inmate, we save the State of Arizona and its taxpayers over $20 million annually by having successfully kept hundreds of women from returning to prison as a result of providing them with marketable business skills and jobs on the outside upon completion of their sentences. Add to this amount a difficult to calculate yet undeniably significant savings resulting from the women who are now able to financially support their families without depending on welfare and other government handouts.

On the revenue side, the women who successfully re-integrate with society generate state and federal tax dollars on the incomes they receive and on the goods and services they consume. More significantly though, over the past 15 years Televerde’s prison-based workforce has generated an estimated $2 billion in net new sales revenue for our clients. This is revenue on which taxes are paid, on which business is expanded, and on which the U.S. economy is strengthened.

Yet also without question, we have our detractors, namely those who focus on unsubstantiated business risks where others see immense rewards. This group also includes those who emphasize that the currently incarcerated women are taking away jobs from those who haven’t committed crimes instead of focusing on the fact that it is because of the situation these women are in that they are generally much better qualified and poised to create a higher level of performance for our clients who clearly recognize this as a competitive advantage.

In these uncertain economic times, with the help of our forward-thinking clients (many of whom are among the top technology firms in the world and others who are leaders in their respective categories), Televerde has generated one certainty: That corporate social responsibility goes well beyond “being green” and that it can and does have a far-reaching positive impact on government, business and society’s pocketbooks.

According to the Bureau of Justice and the U.S. Probation Office, an unemployed ex-offender is four times more likely to return to prison than an employed ex-offender. In the U.S., one in every 746 American women is imprisoned and between the ages of 35-39 one in every 265 women is imprisoned. Can we really afford not to reduce these numbers?

Thank you Forbes for calling attention to a national problem and a solution that some members of corporate America are helping us to solve.

We encourage you to read the Forbes article and then return to our blog if you’d like to share your opinions about what you’ve read. Don’t hold back – we welcome all comments.

Follow us on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Connect to us on LinkedIn
Subscribe to us on YouTube